


The Song of the Caged Bird

by rubysolange



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumbelle daughter, belle daughter, rumplestiltskin daughter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubysolange/pseuds/rubysolange
Summary: In the Enchanted Forest, Regina tells Rumplestiltskin that Belle has perished on an adventure against a fearsome beast, and that her daughter Stella, feared by Sir Maurice because of her suspected lineage, is in need of a home.In the Storybrooke of the First Curse, the mayor’s  stepdaughter Sofia Mills helps her brother pay back a debt to his teacher by taking a job at Mr Gold’s shop. Spending time with him makes her begin to realize that not everything is as her stepmother says it is...
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Henry Mills & OC Sister, Maurice | Moe French/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold & Original Character(s)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 43





	1. Welcome to Storybrooke

“Princess Abigail,” came the soft voice from the great room of the Dark Castle, “It’s been a long time. I wondered when you might return.”

Princess Abigail, her face hooded and in shadow, stepped into the light of the great room. The voice had come from the chair at the head of the table, facing the opposite direction, and the figure within it was not visible.

“You’re...you’re not the Dark One,” Abigail said slowly, as she walked into the room to face the young woman in the Dark One’s chair.

The girl smiled. “No, admittedly I’m not.”

She was almost eerie, this young girl who lounged so comfortably in the Dark One’s castle. Dressed in an elaborate ball gown a shade of blue so dark it was almost black, the gold thread that wove patterns through the silk made her seem as though she was perhaps overdressed for the occasion. She was small, perhaps a head or two shorter than the princess herself, with long dark hair woven into an elegant braid on her left shoulder, tied off with a thick golden thread. A book lay open on her lap.

“How do you know me?” Abigail asked, her sense of dread mounting as she removed the hood of her cloak.

“We’ve met once before, Princess,” the girl said, snapping her book close and getting to her feet. “How is King Midas? Nasty bit of fairy magic, that. Goes to show you what a wish will do. A golden touch.”

Her eyes met the Princess’. The girl spoke quietly, and having steeled herself to meet with the Dark One, Abigail wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. 

“Your father sought protection. A gauntlet, to protect things from that touch. The Dark One did warn him...there is always a price to pay, for magic.”

Ah, but Abigail did remember now. Six or seven years previous, she had been barely a teenager herself then, but the Dark One had come to her father in an hour of need, and trailing after him had been....a child. 

“You...work for him?”

“Not quite,” the girl said with a crooked smile. Oh, but she almost looked like the Dark One then! She moved with the same eerie fluidity that he did, and left the air disturbed in her wake. 

“Where is he?” Abigail asked, growing more and more uncomfortable, “Where is Rumplestiltskin?”

“Away on business, Princess. There are many who require his service. My name is Stella,” she said, with a curtsy just hasty enough to be mocking, though her eyes were sincere, “I can help.”

Abigail steeled herself - it was said that the Dark One took many apprentices, but what dangerous power might one need to possess for Rumplestiltskin himself to entrust the Dark Castle and his dealings with in his absence? 

“It is my fiancé, Frederick,” Abigail said slowly, “My father...he was protecting my father....”

“Ah, that golden touch again,” Stella said, knowingly, “He was turned to gold.”

“I’ve tried everything. True Love’s Kiss, more potions than I can count. Witch doctors and healers. Nothing has worked,” Abigail sighed.

Stella’s expression softened. “There is a place, Princess, a lake who’s water has the power to return that which was once lost, to break any curse.”

“Tell me,” Abigail said desperately, “I’ll do anything.”

Stella’s eyes flashed, hardening again. “You must be careful with words like that, Princess Abigail. The Dark One preys on desperate souls.”

Abigail blanched. “You said he was away.”

“But always listening, your highness, always watching,” Stella said slowly, turning toward the blazing fire in the hearth. “This information is...sensitive, you see. Magic can be a weapon.”

“I have no need of weapons, Mistress Stella, only to be reunited with my Frederick,” Abigail pleaded.

Stella turned then, her back to the fire. She was a fearsome silhouette for someone of such diminutive stature, and yet the sight of her there filled Abigail with something more akin to hope than fear. “If you are to retrieve the waters of Lake Nostos, you will need a champion. The lake has a fearsome protector, and the beast there will not give up the waters easily. You must make a wise choice, Princess, lest you send the wrong man to his death for your cause.”

Abigail nodded slowly. “And in return for this information?”

“My father says that all magic comes with a price,” Stella said contemplatively, “But I believe, my lady, that you have already paid it.”

~*~

**Storybrooke, Some Time Later**

Mr Gold was a man of, what he imagined to be anyway, extraordinary intuition. He had learned very early on to trust that intuition, as it always led him in the right direction. His life had been a successful one and he was quite content most days to remain alone in his shop, surrounded by peculiar objects. Every intuition, every deal, had suited him well.

The intuition was a bit like a nagging voice in the back of his mind, most days. But sometimes, it was a deafening roar. It had been a day like that when mayor Regina Mills had come to him, asking for a favor. 

“I spent the entire morning talking to adoption agencies - the waitlists are all over two years long. But you, Gold,” she had said, “You know how to cut through red tape, and if anyone knows how to work the system and get me a baby, it’s you.”

“You wish to adopt?”

“Well don’t look so surprised.”

“Oh, I’m not,” he’d said. Regina was a very young widow, but she had been one for quite some time. He couldn’t quite remember how long it had been exactly since her husband had died, but he had been a much older man and, while the marriage yielded no children of their own, she had been left with a teenage stepdaughter. “I’m sure you’ll make...well a mother of some sort.”

Regina was a tough woman, all sharp edges. She had never seemed to grieve her husband’s death much. He had left her a substantial estate - any child Regina adopted would want for nothing. Why could he not remember her husband’s name?

“Can you help me?”

“Of course I can, but a word of caution,” Mr Gold had said, “Ask yourself, is this something you’re ready for?”

“It’s something I need.”

Mr Gold did not doubt that. The mayor’s relationship with her stepdaughter was, while not unpleasant, somewhat strained, and she had no good friends or companions to speak of.

“Well, that may not be the same thing. I’ll get you a child,” he had conceded, “But whether or not that’s helping you, that remains to be seen. When you become a parent, you must put your child first. No matter what.”

Perhaps the mayor wanted a second chance? Her stepdaughter was, after all, not so very much younger than her. While never overtly disobedient to Regina directly, Sofia had been something of a rebellious teenager - she and Ashley Boyd had been expelled from Storybrooke University together after throwing a raucous underage party at their shared on campus apartment. The sheriff had been called, Ashley’s on again off again older boyfriend Sean had spent the night in the Storybrooke cells for providing alcohol to the underage students, and university board had been forced to remove the girls for violation of their dry campus policy. How many years ago was that now?

Did Regina believe that a child of her own might provide her the companionship and love she couldn’t find in her stepdaughter, who had reluctantly moved back home after the incident? What kind of mother would someone like Regina be? 

Following their discussion, yes, Mr Gold had procured a child for Regina - a baby boy that she had named Henry - by following that intuition. Born in Phoenix, adopted through Boston, Regina had brought a baby boy into Storybrooke and with each passing day, and furthermore each passing year, that little nagging voice in the back of Mr Gold’s consciousness grew louder and louder. Why, oh why, did his memory seem to fail him? Why were there so many holes?

It was a night not unlike any other in Storybrooke, when that nagging intuition told Mr Gold to do something a little out of the ordinary - rent was due on the inn, and while it was perhaps a little too late to call upon Mrs Lucas to be entirely proper...there was that voice again, telling him that it just couldn’t wait.

He slipped inside the inn quietly as Mrs Lucas spoke to a woman - a newcomer, a tall blonde in red leather - and prepared her to take a room.

“Would you like a forest view or a square view? Normally there’s an upgrade for the square but, as rent is due I’ll waive it.”

“Square is fine,” said the newcomer. But, when last had there been a newcomer? When last had someone actually stayed at the Inn? Mr Gold couldn’t remember, and that nagging voice taunted him.

“Now, what’s the name?”

What had once been merely intuition or a nagging became a crescendo of indistinct voices.

“Swan. Emma Swan.”

And just like that the entire world spun and came crashing down around him. It was instantaneous, but somehow dulled, and the only thing that betrayed the earth shattering force was his knuckles whitening on the grip of his cane.

Rumplestiltskin was awake. “Emma. What a lovely name.”

“Thanks,” the newcomer said brightly, her voice almost lost in the noise in his head. He smiled.

“It’s all here,” Granny’s voice came to him, grounding him in the moment.

“Yes, yes of course it is, dear,” he said carefully, taking the wad of cash from the older woman. He smiled again at the newcomer - the Savior, he remembered now. “You enjoy your stay. Emma.”

Mr Gold - no, Rumplestiltskin - quietly left the Inn, his head swimming with memories and voices at an unsettling and dizzying speed. He went to his car, clutched the steering wheel and tried to clear the muddiness from - well, it must have been 28 years, hadn’t it? That’s when his vision had said the Savior would return. He knew who he was, that Regina must have succeeded in the Dark Curse, that he was here to find his son, to reunite his family...

His family...

That’s when he saw her. Ruby Lucas - the wolf girl, he picked out of his mixed up memories - leaving the Inn and meeting a friend, someone who had just pulled up a little farther away in a black car. He couldn’t see the driver from where he was parked but when she got out of the car and walked to greet her friend, he knew.

Sofia Mills greeted the wolf girl, and the two began to walk in the direction of downtown together. The mayor’s stepdaughter turned and laughed at something inaudible her companion had said, and suddenly every single piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Sofia Mills wasn’t the queen’s stepdaughter at all, she was Belle’s daughter...his daughter...

Regina had Stella.


	2. The Thing You Love Most

There was a palpable change in the air the moment Emma Swan decided to stay. Mr Gold could feel it. The denizens of the cursed town appeared to have some sense of the change too, as time began to move forward again and the residents crept ever closer to the breaking of the curse.

Rumplestiltskin had known explicitly what the curse would do before he gave it to Regina. The arrival of Belle’s daughter (he so frequently had to remind himself _their_ daughter) had only given him the briefest pause. He knew that Stella would get swept up in the curse, and comforted himself with the knowledge that, whenever the Savior did see fit to waltz into town, she would return to him - and they would seek out Baelfire _together_. Stella had never been any ordinary child, after all, a worthy partner in his quest to reunite his family in the Land Without Magic - and he wondered now if she too could feel the way the balance of time now shifted in Storybrooke.

~*~  
**Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago**

“Well, you can rest assured, I had nothing to do with that tragedy.”

Regina had come to the Dark Castle, dressed in all black, sleek and slippery - come with some false sense of urgency, when he true desires were plain. Regina had information, and she wanted to gloat. 

“What tragedy?” he hissed.

Regina smiled then, pouring herself a cup of tea. “You don’t know? Well.”

Rumplestiltskin, still unsure of what the information to come would be, felt unsettled, as though whatever it was the Queen was going to say next, it wasn’t something he wanted to hear.

“That girl of yours, the one that used to do the dusting,” Regina began, “It was a while ago now, wasn’t it? Ten years ago?”

“Twelve,” Rumplestiltskin corrected her quickly and softly. The queen looked surprised.

“That’s right,” she said, with a false sense of reminiscence.

Twelve years. It has been twelve years since Rumplestiltskin had cast Belle out of the Dark Castle, and there was not a single day that went by that he did not _remember_ it. He’d kept tabs on Belle, where he could, in the time since. She had told him she wanted to see the world...setting her free had allowed her to do just that, but by the gods it had been some time since anyone had seen or heard of her anywhere. He was proud of her, in his way, for managing to elude the reach and influence of the Dark One. 

“She died,” Regina said rather bluntly, “Some small village in King George’s kingdom was plagued by a Yaoguai, she went after it alone.”

Rumplestiltskin was silent, still...he felt as though he’d just been punched in the chest. _All you’ll have_ , Belle’s voice echoed in his mind, _is an empty heart, and a chipped cup_. 

“But then the most curious thing happened,” Regina continued, “The villagers found the cabin where she’d been living, and they found a child.”

Belle was gone, but she had had a daughter. In the time that they had been apart, Belle had had a daughter. 

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Regina questioned him, her eyebrow arched. She studied Rumplestiltskin’s carefully controlled expression. “They sent her to Sir Maurice, but after Belle’s...association with you, well, no one wanted anything to do with the Dark One’s bastard, of course. He locked the girl in a tower, sends in clerics to _cleanse her soul_.”

Belle had had...his daughter?

“So she needs...a h-home,” Rumplestiltskin offered, trembling. 

“Oh, Rumple, you look positively shaken,” Regina said with a small laugh, “What kind of future does your daughter have here with you? With the Dark One?”

Rumplestiltskin blinked. The news felt like a weight, crushing him from above. While Regina’s sense of urgency may have been feigned, Rumplestiltiskin’s own was not.

“Tell you what,” he growled, baring his stained teeth, “You get me the child, and I’ll take care of your little mermaid problem.”

~*~

**Storybrooke**

Sofia Mills woke in her childhood bedroom at the Mayor’s house perhaps a little later than usual. She could hear her stepmother and her brother arguing in the next room - Regina sounded upset. Sofia grumbled to herself through the slight hangover, and forced herself out of bed.

“That hurts me, Henry,” Regina said as Sofia stepped into the hall, “I’m your mother.”

“No you’re not,” Henry snapped cooly. Sofia smiled to herself. 

“Well then who is? That woman you brought here?” Regina snapped back, “I don’t like what she or this book is doing to you. Thankfully, both are no longer an issue.”

Sofia leaned in the open doorway of her brother’s room. “What woman is that, then?”

Regina’s head whipped around at the sound of her stepdaughter’s voice. “Don’t you have a job to get to, Sofia? Sydney will be expecting you. We can’t all be out drinking all night with Ruby Lucas.”

“Just on my way downstairs to make coffee, Regina, don’t shoot the passerby,” Sofia said, raising her hands in exaggerated surrender. She winked at her brother. “Just give me a shout if you need anything, Henry.”

~*~  
**Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago**

Regina called Rumplestiltskin to her palace once she had successfully procured the child from the tower. Rumplestiltskin was, however, overcome by a sudden reluctance to meet her - he knew how she would see him, all leather armor and scales; he worried now as he worried about what finding Baelfire would be like. He worried that this child would look into his strange, amber eyes, and see the darkness within. That she would see only the monster, as so many before had. There was that nagging voice that he’d indulged when he’d cast Belle out - _What kind of life can you offer a child? What child deserves such a rotten father? No one can ever love a man with a heart so poisoned_. 

“Nervous, Rumple?”

He glared at Regina, she must have noticed the nervous twitching in his hands. “Why do they say she’s...” He trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken, _the Dark One’s bastard_. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, not about any child Belle had brought into the world. But Belle had been gone a long time, and perhaps she had found a more worthy bedfellow in her travels...

“She has magic,” Regina replied, “Powerful by the sound of it. She’s eleven years old, the timeline adds up.”

Yes, the timeline did add up. There had been but one night...Belle returned from getting straw for him in the village, and he hadn’t expected her to return. What followed was one singular night of empassioned embraces, leaving him confused and dizzy...dizzy from the love he felt for her, confused that she seemed to feel it too.

“ _Kiss me again, it’s working_!” Belle had said, as the curse of the Dark One weakened its hold on him...and that was when the dizziness and the confusion faded. When he realized the something that had changed her mind hadn’t been a something at all, but a someone. 

“Why are you helping me?” Rumplestiltskin mused in a voice barely more than a whisper, remembering the part Regina had played that night he’d cast Belle out. “What’s in this for you?”

“Mermaids, remember,” she said with a shrug of her elegant shoulders, “And besides, uncomfortable’s a new shade of green on you, Rumple.”

Regina swung open the doors to her chambers and revealed a small child, sitting cross legged on the floor beside the fire. There was a book open in her lap, and she read quietly, while her right hand idly drew patterns in the air with tiny licks of flame, so idly in fact, Rumplestiltskin wasn’t sure the girl was even aware she was doing it.

She was small, perhaps too small - Baelfire had been taller by that age, but then, Belle was a small woman too - dressed in a shabby purple gown that had seen better days. Her hair was chestnut brown and fell about her shoulders, thick and with the slightest curl. She looked so like Belle in this light, her eyes downcast, unaware of the world, but there was something feral about her, about the way she sat on the sheepskin and not the fireside chairs, about the way she made the flames dance around her fingertips, as though her magic came as easily to her as breathing.

“There’s someone to meet you, dear,” Regina said, announcing their presence, snapping the child out of her revere. She looked up, the flames around her fingers immediately went out, and she fixed Rumplestiltskin with a steely blue stare. Belle’s eyes. She had Belle’s eyes. In the milliseconds he’d allowed himself to, oh, how he had hoped she’d have Belle’s eyes! “Rumplestiltskin, this is -“

“Stella,” the child said, standing and brushing off her skirts, her book tucked under her arm. “My name is Stella. My mother told me about you - you’re my father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprised there’s actually been views on this, so I guess I might as well continue!
> 
> I have a surprising amount of ideas for this character that I’ve never done anything with.


	3. Snow Falls

It was Saturday morning, and Henry had promised Regina he would be spending the majority of the day at the arcade before she left for the mayor’s office. Sofia smiled at him over her morning coffee, having guessed his intentions to be more than they seemed, especially when her brother came flying down the stairs stuffing what appeared to be one of Regina’s blouses into his backpack.

“Playing dress up at the arcade, are we, Henry?” she asked.

Henry shifted uncomfortably. “You won’t tell Mom, will you?”

Sofia shook her head. “Of course not. Is this about that storybook Regina was so upset about?”

Henry smiled. “I’m having breakfast at Granny’s with Emma and Ms Blanchard. Things are changing around here!”

“Come on,” Sofia laughed, “I’ll give you a lift. I’ve got a stop I want to make in town anyway.”

The drive to Granny’s was a short one, and Henry was quiet mostly, but bursting with excitement. When they reached the diner, Emma was already seated at a booth, waiting for them.

“You must be the famous Emma,” Sofia said as they entered the diner, “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Sofia, Henry’s stepsister.”

“Not the evil kind,” Henry specified.

“Decidedly not,” Sofia agreed. 

Emma smiled. “Regina doesn’t-“

“Know that he’s here?” Sofia finished, “Not a chance. I’m on your side, Emma. Any time you want to see Henry, you guys just let me know.”

“Thanks,” she said. Henry handed her the shirt from his backpack. “I’m going to go get changed, I’ll be right back.”

“I knew we could trust you for Operation Cobra!” Henry said to his sister, positively beaming. 

“Yeah, yeah, what are sisters for?” Sofia smiled, “You fill me in on what Operation Cobra is later and uh, whatever developments are happening here. I’ve got an errand to run. And you tell that Ms Blanchard that we’re going to pay her back for you _stealing her credit card_.”

Henry smiled sheepishly. 

~*~  
**Enchanted Forest  
Ten Years Before the Dark Curse**

Rumplestiltskin traveled by carriage with relative infrequency. It was an afterthought that prompted him to conjure the carriage when Regina left him alone with his daughter to prepare for their travels back to the Dark Castle. While a puff of smoke was perhaps more his usual style, the way the little girl - Stella, _Belle’s_ daughter, _their_ daughter - smiled when she saw the two horses that pulled the carriage, one black and one white, produced a pang in his heart he had not even known he was capable of feeling.

Father and daughter - something Rumplestiltskin himself would need to get used to - rode together in somewhat nervous silence. Rumplestiltskin had many questions, and yet could not find the voice to ask them of her, starting and stopping several times and fidgeting uncomfortably across from the little girl. He was cautious, unsure of where or how to begin. Stella, for the most part, remained fixated on her book, pausing to look out the windows at the unfamiliar surroundings from time to time. Rumplestiltskin found himself watching her with rapt attention. There were small things, the way she smiled when she read something that obviously interested her, that reminded him of Belle, and still others, like the way she seemed to enjoy the movement of the carriage, that stirred older memories of Bae...

It had begun to snow as they traveled toward the Dark Castle, and when Stella shivered slightly, Rumplestiltskin conjured a traveling cloak of blue velvet lined with thick white fur without thinking. Stella’s eyes widened.

“Traveling is drafty,” he explained gruffly, holding out the cloak to her.

Stella arched a single eyebrow as she reached for the cloak. She smiled, wrapping it around herself. “It’s very warm. Thank you.”

Rumplestiltskin smiled at her wistfully. Her expression was inquisitive, studying his features properly for the first time.

“Ah, what is it that you’re reading?” he asked, trying to sound off handed, as though his heart wasn’t in his throat.

“It’s from the queen’s library,” Stella said, breaking their uneasy eye contact.

“Does Regina know you borrowed that?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

“Perhaps not,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. 

Rumplestiltskin laughed, seeing perhaps a bit of himself in the child now as well. “Well, go on - what’s it called? What did you liberate from Queen Regina?”

Stella held up the book from her lap. _Flora and Fauna of the Northern Realms_. “I like plants.”

“Plants?” he repeated.

“Plants,” she agreed with a grin.

“Well then,” Rumplestiltskin said, with a flourish of his hand, “You shall have a garden, my dear!”

Stella giggled at his theatrics and some of the uncertainty between them began to lift. Rumplestiltskin smiled; they were not so different. 

“Mama said you are the most powerful man in all the Realms,” she started, “Is that true?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Rumplestiltskin teased with a wink. 

Stella laughed again. “And you are a great and terrible wizard?”

“The greatest and the most terrible,” he agreed theatrically.

“You can teach me?” she asked, “I won’t need to hide my magic anymore? I want to learn to...like you did, with the cloak.”

He smiled sincerely and warmly. Her stalwart determination, yes, that was Belle too. “Of course.”

“Mama said people would guess who I was if I used my magic. I can’t always help it though it’s...”

“Instinctual,” Rumplestiltskin finished where Stella’d trailed off. Yes, his magic was much the same, and he had not been _born_ with it.

She nodded. “We had to be careful.”

Belle had gone to a lot of trouble to keep the identity of her daughter’s father a secret. Rumplestiltskin had a great many enemies, and any child of his out in the world would have a target on their back - Belle had sought to protect Stella from all possible threats, himself included. He remembered the way he had shaken her, screamed at her - despite his hurt at the deception, yes, he could see why Belle would pause to tell him about their child. 

Rumplestiltskin smiled sadly. “Intelligent woman, your mother. You’ll be safe at my castle.”

“You came for me. Mama always said if you knew, you’d come. My grandfather’s men...they just locked me away; I think he’d hoped to forget about me. But you came,” she mused quietly, “I’m not sure you’re as dark as people say.”

Only _one_ person had ever voiced thoughts like that to him before. 

Rumplestiltskin stared at her, his eyes wide. “I...”

“I don’t believe people are quite so black and white,” she shrugged, opening her book and directing her attention to it once again. 

Rumplestiltskin nodded stiffly, at a complete and utter loss for words. Stella was astute and unassuming; he and Belle had not parted on the best of terms, and it would have been easy to have filled their daughter’s head with any number of the terrible (and true!) things he had done or said. Instead Belle proved to be no different than she had at the Dark Castle, and she had taught her child that things are not always as they seem on the surface. That, he imagined, might suit the daughter of the Dark One well.

~*~  
**Storybrooke**

The bell on Mr Gold’s door jingled as it opened. Mr Gold himself was in the back room, working on the gears of an old pocket watch with a magnifying glass and none too subtly avoiding his patrons. In the days since the Savior had decided to stay and time had begun moving again, the curse’s grip on Storybrooke had begun to loosen. While the residents remained firmly unaware of their true selves, Mr Gold imagined that they each had begun to properly hear their own strange little “intuitions”, very many of them coming into his shop to look around, unsure of what they were looking for. Quite frankly, his patience with them was wearing thin.

“Mr Gold?” a voice carried back to him, “Is this a bad time?”

Mr Gold dropped the pocket watch with a clatter. He quickly pulled himself together.

“Miss Mills,” he said, stepping into the shop; his grip on his cane was tight, as though he feared loosening it would loosen his very tether to the planet itself. “To what do i owe the unexpected pleasure?”

Sofia smiled at him from the doorway. It was the first proper look Rumplestiltskin had of his daughter since he had been released from the curse. In the Enchanted Forest, her hair had been waist length, tied with flowers and braids throughout - it was shorter here, perhaps a little straighter than he remembered it. Her eyes were the same, ice blue and yet still warm - like her mother’s.

“I need cash, and I thought,” she said, looking nervously at her feet, “Mr Gold buys things.”

“Ah.”

“My brother,” Sofia explained, “He owes somebody money and I said I’d help him pay it back.”

“Henry?” Mr Gold asked, “Who does Henry owe money to?”

“He stole his teacher’s credit card to find his birth mother,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

Mr Gold laughed. “Resourceful.”

“My father always said it was important to pay your debts,” Sofia said, coming to meet him at the counter of one of the many display cases, “I’ll not have that poor Ms Blanchard paying for Henry’s sake off a teacher’s salary.”

Mr Gold regarded her carefully. _That_ was very Stella. Perhaps she too could hear that intuition?

“I see.”

“Problem is, I’m not exactly swimming in money working part time at the paper,” she continued. Yes, he remembered now - Sofia had returned home from Storybrooke University with an unfinished degree in botany and Regina had pulled strings to get her a job with Sydney Glass. It had been, he imagined, an easy place to keep her under her thumb. Keeping Stella under her thumb seemed to be something Regina was very interested in doing...why else make the Dark One’s daughter her stepdaughter in this new land?

“So what can I do for you, Miss Mills?” 

“I haven’t got much,” she said, placing a velvet pouch down on the counter, “But I have got this. It’s all I have of my mother, it’s got to be worth something.”

Mr Gold eyed the velvet pouch cautiously. Before the curse hit, Rumplestiltskin had bargained with Regina for a comfortable life for himself and his daughter - he had not bargained for an easy one. Sofia Mills lived in the mayor’s house, surrounded by comfortable wealth and luxury - but she had been dealt a rather difficult past. His cursed memories told him that Sofia’s mother had been a woman called Lacey French and her father a much older professor of literature at the university - what resulted was a scandalous student/teacher pregnancy and a difficult adjustment for Lacey to motherhood. Decending into depression and alcoholism, Lacey went on to abandon Sofia when she was very young, never to be seen or heard from again. Several years later, when Sofia was a teenager, her father went on to marry Regina and then died shortly thereafter from cancer. Sofia had remained with her stepmother all those years after because, in her mind, she had no where else to go. Mr Gold thought, bitterly, that Regina had taken quite a few liberties with Belle’s story at his and his daughter’s expense. 

Opening the pouch, Mr Gold removed a small, delicate necklace - a thin gold chain with a single teardrop pearl. It was all he could do to remain composed, to disguise what felt like a physical blow as he recognized the necklace immediately. It had been Belle’s, Belle had been wearing it the last time he’d seen her, many many years ago at the Dark Castle. _Stella_ didn’t have many keepsakes of her mother’s, just a few books she’d left behind - where did _Sofia_ get her necklace?

“It’s, ah,” Mr Gold said, clearing his throat as he feared his voice would break. “It’s very beautiful, but I can’t take it.”

“Oh, come on, it has to be worth something,” Sofia sighed exhasperatedly, “My father said it was gold.”

“Oh, it is gold, that’s not the problem,” he said, tucking it back inside the velvet pouch.

“What is?”

Mr Gold turned away from her then, and walked to the safe. From it, he removed a stack of cash, and brought it back to the counter. 

“Will a thousand cover it?” he asked.

“I don’t understand.”

“Will one thousand dollars cover the debt to Ms Blanchard?” he repeated, counting the cash out onto the counter.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t take the necklace?” Sofia said, dumbfounded. He knew what it must look like to her - Mr Gold was not exactly known for his generosity. One did not become the richest man in town that way.

“I won’t. Debts do have to be paid, Miss Mills, but I can’t in good conscience allow you to trade your mother for Henry’s,” he explained. “Take the money, pay off Ms Blanchard’s credit card, and we’ll find another way for you to pay me back.”

“Are you sure, Mr Gold?” Sofia asked, “It’ll take me a long time to save up a thousand dollars working part time at the Daily Mirror.”

“We’ll think of something,” he smiled sadly.


	4. The Price of Gold

It was an unfortunate side effect of a deal in the process of going wrong that brought Mr Gold to visit Emma Swan at Mary Margaret Blanchard’s loft apartment. It was Ms Blanchard who answered the door, but upon discovering that he had business to discuss with Ms Swan, the former made herself quite scarce.

“I’m looking for someone. I have a photo,” he said, passing it to her. “Her name is Ashley Boyd and she’s taken something quite valuable of mine.”

He suspected his little theory about intuitions was true, considering the way Ashley had maced him in his shop the night before - somewhere within her, she must have remembered that maternal instinct that had driven Princess Ella in the Enchanted Forest.

“So why don’t you just call the police?” Emma asked bluntly.

“Because, ah...” he started, trying his best, he realized, to sound compassionate, “She’s a confused young woman. She’s pregnant, alone, and scared. I don’t want to ruin this young girl’s life, I just want my property returned.”

“And what is it?”

“ _In this world or the next, Cinderella_ ,” his own voice echoed in his head, “ _I will have your baby_!”

“Well, one of the advantages of you not being the police is discretion,” he said, “Let’s just say it’s a precious object and leave it at that.”

“When did you see her last?” Emma asked, folding the security camera photo.

“Last night, that’s how I got this,” he said, brushing his hair aside to show her the gash in his forehead from where he’d hit it. “It’s so unlike her - she was quite wound up, rambling on about _changing her life_. I have no idea what got into her.”

He could feel Emma’s reluctance like something tangible in the air. In the end, however...well, Mr Gold always knew what buttons he needed to press from people to get them to do what he wanted. 

“Ms Swan, please just help me find her,” he continued earnestly, “My only other choice is the police, and I don’t think anyone wants to see that baby born in jail, now do they?”

“No, of course not,” she replied. 

“So you’ll help me, then?” he asked.

“I will help _her_ ,” she clarified.

“Grand.”

“Hey, Emma,” Henry’s voice came as the door to the apartment swung open, “I was thinking we-“

Mr Gold smiled. “Hey, Henry, how are you?”

“Okay,” the boy said cautiously. 

“Good,” he said, “Give my regards to your mother, and uh...good luck, Ms Swan.”

As he left the loft apartment, Mr Gold smiled to himself, appreciating the boy’s tenacity in sneaking around Regina to see his birth mother. Henry’s wariness of him was somewhat endearing to Mr Gold - it made him wonder just how much of the strange world that existed inside the town the mayor’s son had noticed. 

“Hey, Mr Gold,” a voice came from across the street, “Didn’t think I’d run into you here.”

Across the street, leaning against a black car with a smashed headlight and flicking aside a cigarette butt, was Sofia, her eyes hidden behind big black sunglasses.

”Business takes me many places, Ms Mills,” he said with a smile.

“Heard about that break in at your shop,” she said conversationally as he approached her. “The Daily Mirror’s got eyes and ears everywhere.”

Mr Gold laughed quietly. “Slow news day, I suppose.”

Sofia laughed.

“You know, I was thinking actually,” she began, removing her sunglasses, “You could probably use a hand - you know, around the shop. It’d give me an excuse to leave the paper...doesn’t sit right with me, that article Sydney printed about Emma.”

Mr Gold considered her offer, studying her face. Sofia looked _hopeful_. Yes, he thought, perhaps those strange little intuitions were at play. Sofia pulled her hand through her hair, revealing a simple golden bangle on her wrist. 

“That’s a beautiful bracelet,” he said evenly, “Wherever did you get it?”

Sofia looked confused. “This old thing? My father gave it to me when I was a little girl. It’s nothing...fools gold.”

Mr Gold smiled.

“Listen, at least consider. I still owe you that money - I could come work for you,” she said, taking a scrap of paper and a pen from her bag and scrawling something on it, “Take my number; at least think about it and give me a call.”

Mr Gold nodded, taking the scrap of paper. As he began to leave her, he turned again.

“Your headlight, Ms Mills,” he said, “You should get that fixed, it could be dangerous.”

~*~  
**Enchanted Forest  
Ten Years Before the Dark Curse **

In another life, back before he was the Dark One, parenting had come, well, very naturally to Rumplestiltskin. Parenting _as_ the Dark One on the other hand? Not quite so easy.

It was the early days of his life with the curse that had driven Baelfire away, he told himself, before he knew how to control it. Back then, at the beginning, the power had been new and intoxicating...now, he told himself, after nearly three hundred years of living with it, he was bound to be less volatile. 

Stella was, by all means, a very different child than Bae had been. Where Rumplestiltskin’s son had been wary and perhaps frightened of his powers, his daughter reveled in them. Rumplestiltskin had taken apprentices before, nearly always women with darkness in their hearts, which he had taught them to cultivate and channel. Stella’s magic was different, and the more he taught her, the more he began to imagine, with a sinking suspicion, that it had not been born of his curse at all - she possessed a great potential for both dark and light magic, and that meant...no. It was best not to think about what that meant.

“Now concentrate,” Rumplestiltskin said. 

It was a bright day, the snow of the winter when Stella first came to the Dark Castle had melted, and Rumplestiltskin had, as promised, conjured her a beautiful garden on the grounds.

“I _am_ concentrating,” the little girl said, her eyes screwed shut and her hands balled into fists at her sides.

“Think long and hard, and _pluck it_ ,” Rumplestiltskin said, circling her.

Stella grumbled, and her fists erupted in flames.

“That’s the wrong road to go down, dearie,” he said in a singsong voice, “If you give in to the anger now, you’ll only char it.”

Stella shook out her hands and the flames dissipated.

“Imagine a field on a summer’s day,” Rumplestiltskin said, his voice softer, soothing. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “A gentle breeze ruffles the flowers. Can you feel it?”

She nodded slowly; her eyes darted back and forth beneath her lids. 

“Open your eyes.”

Stella opened her eyes and saw, there in her hands, a single sunflower. 

“A sunflower from the Infinite Meadows,” Rumplestiltskin said, not without a bit of pride in his tone, “Not an easy conjure, you know. This will do just fine for King Midas.”

Stella’s magic was _strong_ , if a bit feral. She was prone to magical outbursts that she hadn’t quite learned how to control, especially when emotional, but in only three months at the Dark Castle she had surpassed any student Rumplestiltskin had ever taken on - he had no doubt that she could overcome such outbursts. Conjuring something from inside the castle was easy - but conjuring magic from another kingdom was another feat entirely.

Stella held the flower out to him. “What’s it for?”

“Protection,” he said, spinning the stem and examining the flower closely. He plucked a single petal from the flower, and wrapped it around her wrist, “A petal from the Infinite Meadows can protect against some harmful magic.”

He waved his hand over her wrist and the petal beneath turned to gold, wrapping around her arm like a bangle. Stella giggled, her eyes filled with wonder.

“Now pay close attention to it,” Rumplestiltskin instructed.

Stella took the bracelet from her wrist. It was soft, as soft as it had been before Rumplestiltskin enchanted it.

“It feels the same,” she replied, “How can it feel the same?”

“Fools gold,” Rumplestiltskin replied theatrically, “Deceives the senses, can be used to trick some enchantments. Makes the magic think it’s working.”

“So this is what we’re going to use,” Stella deduced, examining the bracelet, “To protect King Midas from himself.”

“Precisely.” 

~*~  
**Storybrooke**

“So absolutely everyone in this town is a fairytale character,” Sofia said, “Even me?”

“Yeah, you too,” Henry said excitedly, opening his book on his bed and beckoning her closer. He pointed to one of the pictures, “Ms Blanchard is Snow White, David Nolan - that John Doe from the other day - is Prince Charming, and they’re my mom - Emma’s - parents!”

“And Regina is the Evil Queen?” Sofia asked as Henry turned the page. She had to admit, the illustration _did_ look a bit like Regina. “I mean she’s strict, Henry, but I don’t know about evil.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “She took everyone’s memories and separated them from their families. She’s evil.”

“Okay, so who am I? You told Emma I’m not an evil step sister,” Sofia mused, “So I guess that rules out me terrorizing Ashley in a previous life.”

She had to admit, Henry _had_ put a whole lot of time into concocting his fairytale theory. He studied her face for a moment before turning back to the book. 

“I haven’t worked it out yet,” he said, his eyes downcast as he flipped through the book. “You must be someone powerful though - the Evil Queen wanted to keep you close, that’s why she made you her stepdaughter.”

“So I’m on her side?”

“I don’t think so, I don’t think you’re a villain.” 

“Thanks,” Sofia laughed. “You think she did it to keep an eye on me, not because we’re friends. May I?”

Henry turned the book to face her excitedly. She flipped through it aimlessly, looking at the different illustrations and glancing at the words. The artwork was detailed and the stories a bit darker than the ones she remembered as a child. There was something about them, compelling in a way that she couldn’t quite understand.

“There’s still loads of people I haven’t been able to match up yet,” Henry said, “Some were obvious - like Ruby Lucas and Granny - but others are way harder.”

“Like me?” 

He nodded. “And Mr Gold.”

Sofia turned the page. She couldn’t explain it, but it felt as though something, suddenly, had clicked.

“I think I know who Mr Gold is,” she said quietly, allowing the thought to fully form.

“Oh yeah? Let me see!”

“Well, he’s powerful and he loves making deals all over town,” she said, turning the book so that Henry could see the illustration. Looking at the image - a fearsome imp with greenish flesh dressed head to toe in leather, striking a bargain with a princess in her father’s court - it had just _made sense_ to her somehow to say what came next. “What about Rumplestiltskin?”


	5. That Still Small Voice

Mr Gold called Sofia three days after she’d run into him while dropping Henry off at his mother’s. He’d called early in the morning, and seemed genuinely surprised that she’d answered the phone at all.

“Hello?”

“Ms Mills?”

“Mr Gold?”

“I, ah...I thought about what you said,” he began uncertainly, “It wouldn’t hurt to have someone else around to watch the shop. When can you start?”

“Whenever works for you!” she said brightly, “I’ll just have to give my notice over at the paper, but I can start tomorrow if you needed me to.”

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, his voice somewhat strained. “Your stepmother is bound to be...upset.”

“It’s a full time job, Mr Gold, that alone’s gotta be worth Regina‘s irritation.”

Mr Gold laughed.

Upset wasn’t _quite_ the word for what Regina was when she found out that Sofia had quit the paper. It came up at dinner that night, following a stressful day - Henry and his psychiatrist had been trapped down in the mines, and it had taken quite a few people (including Regina’s least favorite, Emma Swan) a very long time to get them out. Sofia thought it was a bit poetic in a way, that what was likely her last real story for the paper had been a big one - Emma’s brave rescue was bound to make the front page.

“What’s this Sydney tells me about you leaving the Daily Mirror?” Regina said as Sofia and Henry set the table. Her voice was controlled, a tone Sofia had learned to associate with the calm before the storm, and Henry shot his stepsister a concerned glance.

“It just felt like it was time to move on,” Sofia said carefully, “I was never really much of a writer anyway.”

“And have you found something else?” Regina asked as the three took their seats at the table - Regina sat at the head, Henry to her right and Sofia to her left. “I’ve told you before, Sofia, if you aren’t going to be in school, you really do need to have a job. If you want to live in this house, you need some responsibility, you can’t just go out drinking with your friends every night.”

Sofia was achingly familiar with this particular lecture of Regina’s. She’d heard it more times than she could count over the years. She rolled her eyes and reached for the bottle of wine, filling her glass.

“I did, actually,” she responded, “Full time, too.”

Regina looked pleased, almost _impressed_. Well, that wouldn’t last long.

“Oh? And where’s that?” she asked.

“Mr Gold’s shop.”

The color drained out of Regina’s face. 

“Mr Gold’s? But he’s dangerous,” Henry whispered. Sofia winked conspiratorially at him over her wine glass.

“I didn’t realize Mr Gold was hiring,” Regina said, her voice flat as she poured herself a glass of wine.

“I ran into him on Main Street the other day,” Sofia shrugged, “After that break in a few days ago, he thought it might be a good idea.”

They ate for a moment in silence, Henry shooting her glances that ranged between excited and worried. Sofia felt as though she could hear the gears turning in Regina’s head. 

Regina put down her fork definitively. “I don’t think I like the idea of you working there, Sofia.”

“The fact is, Regina, you may be my stepmother but I am a grown woman,” Sofia said as she elegantly stabbed a potato with her own fork, “I make my own choices - Mr Gold offered me a full time job, I’m not going to stay part time at the paper because it’s what you want. No one decides what I do but me.” 

Regina gave her a strained smile, and the three proceeded to eat the rest of their meal in silence. Henry seemed as though he might explode from the excitement of seeing Sofia stand up to his mother _and win_ ; if she was honest with herself, even Sofia was surprised at her own bravery. 

______________________________________  
**Enchanted Forest,  
Five Years Before the Dark Curse**

The doors to the Great Room of the Dark Castle swung open unceremoniously. 

“You’ve put me in a dangerous position, Rumple,” Regina drawled as she strolled into the room, plucking black lace gloves from her hands.

Rumplestiltskin looked up from his wheel grudgingly. Stella, sat cross legged beside the fire in, what he now recognized as one of her mother’s blue dresses, did not even look up from the tome she was studying. Regina was a regular guest at the Castle, if an unwelcome one, and she always appeared to be in a rather foul mood.

“Oh?” he said, “Do elaborate.”

“I cut off trade to King George as per our last deal,” Regina said, perching herself on the long table.

“Tea, Regina?” Stella asked, without tearing her eyes from the page, “You like it with lemon, don’t you?”

A silver tea set complete with a plate of sliced lemons materialized by the queen’s side. Regina smiled, if a little bitterly, and busied herself with her cup. 

“Well, his Kingdom is positively hemmoraging money, and George is claiming that it was a hostile action on my part. He’s seeking an alliance,” she said, her voice laced with something sickly sweet, “With Sir Maurice. They’ve all but declared war on me.”

“Maurice doesn’t have the soldiers,” Rumplestiltskin growled, standing from his wheel at last and approaching the queen. She was amused, for a ruler on the brink of war with two other kingdoms, her red painted lips pulled into a smirk. 

“The ogre wars were a long time ago, Rumple,” Regina said, “Tell me, girl, how old are you now?”

“I have a name, Regina, I know you know it,” Stella said, closing her book and going to stand by her father, “I’m sixteen.”

Regina exhaled a sigh. “Well. Sixteen years... Maurice has had time to rebuild Avonlea. As you can imagine he’s not happy with me, after I freed his granddaughter from the tower...”

Rumplestiltskin was smouldering. Without thinking, his magic was wrapping itself around Regina’s throat, and she was laughing quietly through the strain.

“Papa,” Stella said, her hand at his elbow, “Let her finish at least.”

He turned to face Stella, stood there in her mother’s blue dress, her blue eyes pleading, and he grudgingly released his hold on Regina.

“Talk,” he growled as the queen rubbed at her throat.

“There’s been whispers around the Kingdom about the Dark One’s new apprentice,” she said hoarsely, “A teenager. I’m sure Maurice can guess.”

“And what does he want?”

“His ambassador offered me a deal. Sir Maurice won’t lend his soldiers to King George,” Regina replied, “If he can have one meeting alone with the Dark One’s apprentice.”

“That’s out of the question, dearie,” he replied in singsong. He raised his hand as though he meant to choke Regina again, but Stella gently pushed his arm down.

“Papa.”

“No.”

“Think of the bigger picture, Papa,” Stella whispered in an attempt to ground him, to remind him why he needed King George bankrupt in the first place. Quieter, she said, “And besides, it’s not your deal to make, is it?”

Rumplestiltskin regarded his daughter - no, in this moment, she was _all_ Belle - with narrowed eyes. The stubborn streak, the set in her jaw and the way she pierced him with steady bravery, unafraid to face the man - her own grandfather - who had held her captive five years previous....yes, that was all Belle.

He nodded stiffly. 

“You may tell my grandfather, Regina, that I accept his terms,” Stella said steadily, “But I will not come unprotected.”

_____________________________________  
**Storybrooke**

Sofia met Mr Gold at the shop the next morning.

“Your headlight, Miss Mills,” he said, nodding back at her car as he unlocked the shop, “You still haven’t fixed it?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said with a shrug, “It’s been busted for...well, as long as I can remember really. Probably ever since I’ve had it.”

Mr Gold nodded silently, fiddling with the key in the lock. If Sofia didn’t know any better, she’d’ve said his hands were shaking. 

“I’m going to make tea,” he said as they entered, “Would you like a cup?”

“Tea’d be great, thanks,” she replied.

He smiled at her, then made his way into the back room. Mr Gold’s shop was one of the only places in town Sofia could say with some certainty that she’d never properly explored. The sheer massiveness of his collection was like sensory overload, every surface and display case filled with peculiar things, every single one of them seemingly calling out, whispering secrets she couldn’t understand. After a moment of staring at two unsettling wooden puppets, their mouths agape mid-scream, it occurred to Sofia that Mr Gold, with his cane, would struggle to carry two cups of tea and pushed aside the curtain to join him in the back room.

The shelves in the back room were as packed as every surface in the shop proper, and Mr Gold stood with his back to her, pouring the tea. 

“My God, I can’t remember the last time I’ve _seen_ so many books,” Sofia breathed as she caught sight of an overflowing bookshelf.

Mr Gold jumped at the sound of her voice, the items on the tea tray clattering as he fumbled with one of the cups. He turned, studying her face carefully.

“Not much for reading material at the mayor’s mansion?” he said at last, handing her one of the elegant black and gold teacups. The cup was perhaps too ornate, too precious of an antique to be used on any old regular Thursday morning, but strangely it seemed to fit the surroundings.

“I swear, I’ve read everything in that house three times over,” she laughed. Mr Gold gave her a thin little smile and she sipped her tea. “Ginger tea?”

“You don’t mind?”

Sofia was taken aback by the look on his face. Mr Gold, the most powerful man in Storybrooke, even more powerful than her stepmother, looked genuinely worried that he had offended her. It didn’t make any sense.

“No, no, it’s fine!” she said, finding herself placing a reassuring hand on his arm. “Ginger was my father’s favorite. He said it could cure anything from an upset stomach to nerves. Like magic.”

Mr Gold took a step back, watching her with wide eyes. 

“You may...feel free to borrow any books here that interest you, Ms Mills,” he said quietly. 

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“And ah...if you follow me, I’ll show you how I keep the inventory.”


	6. Instructions of an Absent Daughter

**Enchanted Forest,  
** **Ten Years Before the Dark Curse,  
Twelve Years After the Ogre Wars of Avonlea**

My Dearest Papa,

I hope this letter finds you, and if it finds you, I hope that it finds you well. Many years have passed since I saw you last, on the eve of the final battle of the Ogre Wars. I wonder if you still think me the captive of a beast, and hold no hope in your heart of ever hearing from me again.

Much has changed over the past twelve years, Papa. I hope that you can forgive me for not writing sooner, and though I promise I had the best of intentions, I cannot pretend I do not also have regrets in the matter. It has been important for me to keep a low profile over these years, and though I know the idea often brought you displeasure, I have done much traveling and adventuring during this time and it has taught me many things. However, now I must make an important decision - not for my sake, but for my child’s. You see, I am a mother now, Papa, and as I watch my daughter grow into a wonderful young woman, I begin to fear that I am doing her a disservice in this life of ours. There are some things that I simply cannot teach her, some questions I cannot answer, and for her to flourish - something needs to change.

It is with this careful consideration that I write to tell you that I must now do the brave thing - my daughter and I will be returning to the Enchanted Forest. I long to see my family and my beautiful homeland, and I look forward to sharing the warmth of our people with my daughter.

I am sure you have many questions, Papa, as to where I’ve been and how I find myself with an eleven year old child. I shall answer everything in time and in person, but I must beg of you not to mention my return until my daughter and I are safe within the walls of Avonlea. I am not without enemies, Papa, and there are many in these realms who would wish us harm. 

Ever your dutiful, if inscrutable, daughter, and all of my love,

Belle xx


	7. Desperate Souls

**Many Years Ago**

Returning to the Echanted Forest was not a decision Belle made lightly. She had left on the words of a witch doctor, words that haunted her still, even twelve years later. _Wherever you’re running to, will you be safe there? It’s not just about you anymore_. 

Upon leaving the Dark Castle all those years ago, Belle had been determined to have some proper adventures of her own before she considered heading home to her father. Everything changed, however, when she discovered she was pregnant. 

Instead, Belle found herself at a rather difficult crossroads. The child Belle carried was the child of the Dark One, and sooner or later _someone_ \- be it Rumplestiltskin himself or one of his enemies - would come looking for them. For their safety, Belle would need to disappear before anyone knew there was a child at all. She arranged passage with a Portal Jumper and went to Oz. It was easy, she had been told, to simply get lost in Oz.

In a farmhouse in Munchkin Country, Belle gave birth to a baby girl, Stella Lucette - _So named for the light of a thousand stars in the dark of an endless night_ , she had whispered - and in Munchkin Country she had remained for eight more years. In those days, the Wicked Witch ruled Oz with an iron fist, and Belle and Stella, now a young girl, joined a Munchkin led resistance - the all female Army of Revolt - to help the fairy princess Ozma take back her father’s throne in the Emerald City.

Ozma was a just ruler, but to the west of the city in Winkie Country, the witch Zelena still posed a threat, and Oz was a nation at near constant war. For her citizens’ protection, the queen had outlawed the practice of magic in Oz, and though she bent the rules rather often to teach Stella some benign fairy Light Magic, the child was encouraged to practice only behind closed doors, lest the news of any new witch in Oz travel beyond the Emerald City. Ozma was the first to recognize that Stella had a proclivity for Dark Magic as well as Light, and just how hard it was for the girl to fully control its more instinctive nature. This worried her.

Belle had begun to think of Ozma much like a younger sister, and in the four or so years she had known the younger girl and acted as her advisor, the queen had been a welcome hand in the raising of her daughter. Stella’s magic presented challenges of which no book could teach Belle, and while Ozma felt afraid of the darkness within the child, she did not shy away from her questions. 

If leaving Oz would be difficult, it would be made more so by the need to say goodbye to the family they had found in Ozma, and as the queen gathered Belle and Stella together in her chambers to say goodbye, her green eyes - as green as the emeralds of the Emerald City itself - swam with tears.

“We shall be lost without you, Belle,” Ozma said sadly.

“You have given us a good life here, Ozma,” Belle replied sincerely, “I shall never forget it.”

“We were all desperate souls then, but no more,” Ozma smiled. “You plan to go straight to your father’s kingdom?”

Belle nodded.

“You keep an eye on this little witch of yours for me,” Ozma said, conjuring a daisy and tucking it behind Stella’s ear, “You best not be getting into any trouble, Stells- unless absolutely necessary, of course.”

Stella giggled. Her mother had dressed her in her best purple dress, and though they left the Emerald City with no return in sight, they carried almost nothing for their journey. 

“And what of... _him_?” Ozma asked. Belle didn’t need her to elaborate - Ozma, like most fairies, hesitated to say his name, even so far out of earshot. 

“I imagine we cannot hide for long,” Belle sighed, placing her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, “Perhaps it is time we stopped.”

“Do you think he will come for you?” Ozma asked. 

“Oh, I do not think he would hesitate to burn down the entire world to get to _her_.”

Ozma shivered. “Right then,” she said, hugging Belle and Stella each in turn as she led them to a portrait of a rolling hillside on the wall, “We will meet again, ladies, of this I am sure.“

Ozma raised her wand, and the image in the portrait began to swirl, no longer a hillside at all, but a swirling vortex - a Portal to another Realm.

“Your Portal awaits,” she said with a watery smile, “Now, Stella, you’re going to want to hang on tight, and Belle, just close your eyes and think - _there’s no place like home_!”

____________________________  
**Storybrooke**

Graham’s death in the weeks after Sofia began her new job at the pawn shop hung over Henry like a dark cloud. Sofia had texted with Emma off and on, ensuring her that her son was, while deflated, otherwise okay. Of Operation Cobra, he was silent, and for the first time in months, Henry appeared disinterested in his storybook. It didn’t sit right with Sofia, and she began to take her lunch break a little later in the day so that she could pick Henry up from school and spend a little more time with him.

Regina, for the most part, took this change in her son easily in her stride. Though grieving the loss of Graham in, what Sofia imagined was her own way (there had been more than one occasion where she had caught the sheriff in the house after one of her own late nights at the Rabbit Hole), Henry’s deliberate avoidance of his birth mother meant that Regina could turn her attention fully to the other thing that was eating at her - Sofia’s job with Mr Gold. Regina believed Sofia to be in the middle of the bitter political battle that was the election for the new Storybrooke sheriff, and cited this in her ever lengthening list of reasons why she felt it inappropriate for Sofia to work at the shop. 

Her stepmother and her employer had drawn swords against one another - Regina, of course, had put forth her old friend Sydney Glass as a candidate, and Mr Gold had shocked the entire town when he decided to back the newcomer Emma Swan. Regina was furious, and so Sofia found it surprising, when, while dusting in the back room, she heard her stepmother’s voice in the shop.

“You’re a bastard,” Regina said. 

Mr Gold laughed quietly, but Sofia couldn’t quite make out what he said. Their voices continued for a moment, still too muffled to be heard, and Sofia caught herself edging closer to curtain the separated the rooms of the shop to put herself better within earshot. 

“Are you really going up against me?” Regina asked incredulously. 

“Not directly,” Mr Gold said, “We are, after all, both invested in the common good. We’re just picking different sides.”

“Well, I think you picked a really slow horse this time,” Regina spat, “It’s not like you to pick a loser.”

“She hasn’t lost yet.”

“She will.”

“Never underestimate someone who is acting for their child,” Mr Gold said.

“He’s not her child. Not legally.”

“Oh,” Mr Gold said, in the carefully controlled voice Sofia knew struck the fear of God in the residents of Storybrooke. Something about his tone, while as inscrutable was ever, indicated that Regina had just _really_ pissed him off. “Now who’s trifling with technicalities?”

Regina stormed off after that, slamming the door to the shop so hard it rattled the glass in the frame. Mr Gold waited a moment, then turned toward the curtain.

“You can come out now, Miss Mills, she’s gone,” he said quietly, “What’s the matter, didn’t want to say hello to your stepmother?”

Sofia guiltily stepped out from behind the curtain. She wrinkled her nose. “Not really.”

Mr Gold smiled. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“Regina fights dirty...you have to already know that,” Sofia said quietly, “You’re probably the only chance Emma has.”

Mr Gold’s smirk remained firmly in place. “It’s nearly 3 o’clock, Miss Mills,” he said. Sofia found her employer a difficult man to read, but in this instance she immediately got the sense that whatever it was that Regina had said that had ticked him off, it was something he needed a moment to think about alone. “Henry will be expecting you.”

She smiled and grabbed her car keys from next to the antique cash register. 

Sofia was a few minutes late picking Henry up from school, but he smiled at her all the same, the same half-hearted smile that had been plastered to his face ever since the sheriff had died.

“Sorry, Henry, I got caught up in something at the shop,” she said as he climbed into the car, “Home or Granny’s? Emma’s? Somewhere else?”

He shrugged. “Granny’s’ll work.”

“Come on, give us a little enthusiasm,” she said, lightly punching his shoulder, “I have a bit of time, I’ll grab a coffee with you before I head back to work.”

When they reached Granny’s, the pair sat in worrying silence for a few moments. Everyone in the diner appeared to be reading the newspaper, and with a sinking feeling, Sofia thought she recognized Emma on the front page. If Regina had Sydney running another smear campaign on Emma, she prayed that Henry hadn’t seen it yet. 

“Did you go to the mechanic today?” Henry asked at last, in what Sofia could tell was a desperate attempt at making conversation.

“The mechanic?”

“Yeah,” he elaborated, “Your headlight isn’t busted anymore, I could have sworn it was this morning.”

Sofia turned to face the windows of the diner, where her car was visible, parked across the street.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she whispered, “Someone fixed my headlight.”

_____________________________  
**Enchanted Forest,  
Ten Years Before the Dark Curse**

It took Belle a moment to get her bearings, but of one thing she was certain - they were not in Avonlea.

Ozma had told her to think of home, so why then did Belle find herself at the foot of the mountains that housed the Dark Castle?

“Mama,” Stella asked, “Are we there? Are we in Avonlea?”

“No, darling,” Belle said, wishing that they had brought more provisions, “We can find shelter in the village, and work out where we need to go from there.”

Stella nodded. The village - the selfsame village where Belle had gone to collect straw the night her daughter was conceived - she knew fell under the jurisdiction of King George in the kingdom of Pentamerone. While Belle knew she would feel more comfortable rather farther away from the shadow of the Dark Castle, perhaps even in King Louis’ court, she knew that without the proper boots and cloaks, the cold would be too much for them. She had a little gold from Oz with her, enough to find them room and board for the time being, perhaps even some warmer clothes. 

Being so close to the Dark Castle meant that Belle had some decisions to make. She had hoped to return home to her father, and to have the Dark One learn about his child from a controlled environment where she could be sure that Stella would be protected. Could she really board a ship after being _so near_?

“Stay close,” she warned her daughter, “And remember - no magic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up with a fair bit of writing for a Belle prequel, which I think I may also post soon :)


	8. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

_A blade, long and wavy, engraved with intricate designs. The dagger is old, older than she can fully understand, and it speaks to her, reaching out, begging her to turn it over, to see what is engraved on the other side. The silver shines in the half light, as though illuminated by candles, and she cannot see as well as she wants to._

_“Well, you wanted to see it,” a high pitched voice says with a giggle._

_The blade begins to turn over in her hand and -_

Sofia awoke. She had had the dream every night for the last month, and every single time it was just as confusing - and just as abrupt - as the night before. 

She made her way to the kitchen, where Henry and her stepmother were preparing breakfast.

“Oh, good, Sofia, you’re up,” Regina said as Sofia went to fix herself a coffee, “It’s February 13th - you know what that means.”

“Just one year I wish you wouldn’t remind me,” she grumbled.

February 13th. Lacey’s birthday.

“Moe called, he’s expecting you at 1,” Regina said firmly.

Sofia nodded slowly, raising the coffee to her lips. 

Her relationship with Moe French was a complicated one. Everyone assured her that Lacey had been Moe’s entire world, but there was no question that Sofia was barely even part of it. Moe seemed to conveniently forget that he had a granddaughter at all, except to honor an old tradition - every year, on Lacey’s birthday, they got lunch together as a family. Lacey French’s family had, however, changed rather substantially over the years. Sofia’s father had told her that it had been Lacey’s idea originally, and in the years after she left it had become a rather tense affair as father and grandfather disagreed over almost everything. Now with her father gone, the yearly lunches alone with Moe had become something Sofia dreaded. 

“I know you don’t like it, but it was important to Alec,” Regina said, her back to Sofia and Henry as she squeezed a lemon into her tea.

Professor Alec Spinner, Sofia’s father, had been the bedrock of the biggest scandal Storybrooke had ever seen when his relationship with the then college student Lacey French went public. Regina hadn’t changed her name when she married him over a decade later because of it, not wanting it to hinder her political career, and Sofia had started going by Mills too somewhere along the line. Regina rarely mentioned her deceased husband and the only time she ever really used his name, it seemed to be to coerce Sofia into doing something she didn’t want to do. 

“I’ll be there, Regina,” she said. She nudged Henry playfully, “Just one time I wish you’d let me bring Henry along to help diffuse the situation.”

“No way!” her brother laughed, elbowing her back. 

Regina insisted on these annual lunches, always saying how important they were to her father - the funny thing was, Sofia couldn’t remember her father ever enjoying her grandfather’s company any more than she did.

____________________________

**Enchanted Forest  
Five Years Before the Dark Curse**

Rumplestiltskin was _worried_. 

He did his best to hide it from his daughter, as she smiled and stood beside him, ready to travel to her grandfather’s (and her mother’s) kingdom. She had agreed enthusiastically to his suggestion that appearing via puff of purple smoke was the best way to make the long journey, a decision that pleased him greatly (he was bound to get at least a jump out of Maurice that way). 

“Ready, Papa?” she asked, her blue eyes wide.

He wanted so desperately to say no, to forbid it, to tell Regina to go to hell and to deal with having pissed off half the kings in the Realm on her own without using his daughter, _Belle’s_ daughter, to clean up her messes.

“It isn’t too late to say no to Regina,” he said in a last ditch effort to persuade her otherwise, his voice small as he picked at a seam in the sleeve of his leather jacket.

He forced his eyes to meet hers. Stella looked every bit the part she was meant to play. Dressed in a gown of deep purple with a high collar, her neck and wrists adorned with jewelry made from Rumplestiltskin’s own gold, there was no doubting Stella to be both the apprentice sorceress to the Dark One and the long-lost princess of Avonlea. 

“The deal is struck,” she shrugged.

Rumplestiltskin nodded stiffly; much as he hated to hear his own words coming from her mouth, she was right.

A cloud of purple smoke enveloped them, and when the smoke cleared they found themselves in the very place Rumplestiltskin had promised himself he’d never find himself again - the throne room of Avonlea.

“Maurrrrrrrice,” Rumplestiltskin drawled. Maurice jumped, just as he’d hoped he would. “It’s been a long time.”

It’d been seventeen years. There were a thousand things left hanging in the air between the two men, things Rumplestiltskin withheld only out of respect for Belle’s memory. The room where Rumplestiltskin had met her for the first time all those years ago had changed, no longer the war council set to the fruitless defense against the ogres, and the years, and no doubt the death of his daughter, weighed heavily on Maurice.

“I-I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” Maurice said, standing from his throne, “I thought you’d use the door.”

Rumplestiltskin shot him a nasty, rotten toothed grin. “Where would be the fun in that?”

Stella, for all her composure and bravery, stood a pace or two behind him, and for that Rumplestiltskin was grateful. She was the picture of grace, but silent.

“This....this is your apprentice?”

Rumplestiltskin fixed Maurice was a calculated stare. Stella nodded, and mutely dropped into a hasty curtsy. “This is Stella.”

Maurice’s face was blotchy; he looked uncomfortable and ill at ease. Belle would have hated him finding satisfaction in seeing her father so agitated, but Rumplestiltskin thought that perhaps her opinion would have changed if she’d known he’d locked her daughter up in a tower. Rumplestiltskin reluctantly left his daughter’s side, beginning to walk around Sir Maurice in a slow circle.

“Regina said the girl would come alone,” Maurice said, shifting uncomfortably and looking anywhere but Stella.

“Regina said you could _speak_ to her alone, but that she would be protected,” Rumplestiltskin said, continuing to circle him like predator and prey, “I am that protection.”

Stella raised her chin as her grandfather’s eyes met hers.

“You get one hour,” Rumplestiltskin said, coming up behind him. He leaned forward and whispered, “If you so much as _think_ about harming a single hair on her head, I will rip out your teeth one by one and string them like pearls while you watch.”

Maurice made a small noise in the back of his throat akin to a gasp; Rumplestiltskin winked at his daughter and in a puff of smoke, disappeared. 

____________________________  
**Storybrooke**

“You’ve grown.”

She hadn’t. She’d stopped growing years ago. Moe never really knew where to start with her, and somehow, somewhere down the line that had become the default. 

Sofia smiled tensely. 

Moe picked the same restaurant every year. The Princess and the Pizza was a small Italian style place on the corner of 3rd and 4th Street (supposedly Lacey’s favorite), more off the beaten path and secluded than somewhere like Granny’s - this meant that, for lunch, it was almost always just the two of them.

The silence was _uncomfortable_ , but not unexpected. Sofia ordered a glass of white wine; Moe didn’t seem to approve of afternoon drinking and scowled.

“So, uh,” he started, clearing his throat, “How’s things at the paper?”

“Wouldn’t know, I left,” she replied shortly.

“You’re going back to school?” Moe asked, his eyes hopeful. Yes, she remembered, majoring in botany was the only decision she’d made that her grandfather had ever stood by. 

She shook her head. “I found a full time job.”

“Oh, that’s excellent! Where?”

Sofia raised her wine glass. “The pawnshop.”

“You don’t want to work for that man,” Moe said darkly, “He’s dangerous. Heartless.”

He didn’t have to name names. Everyone was afraid of Mr Gold. Everyone except her, Sofia decided in that instant purely out of defiance. 

“Well, I owe him a lot of money and he can sign a paycheck just like anyone else.”

Moe‘s face was blotchy, she could see he was angry. 

“You’re so much like your mother it’s infuriating,” he said, not meeting her gaze, “Stubborn, obstinate, and you don’t know the trouble you get yourself into until it’s too late. Spinner poisoned Lacey against me, filling her head with all sorts of nonsense and he’s poisoned you too. He may have told you you were invincible, but you aren’t - and working at that pawnshop with a man like Gold is _dangerous_!”

“It doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead, Granddad; my father has been gone a long time,” she said evenly, “And honestly, if you were so concerned about him ‘poisoning’ me, you would have stepped up years ago.”

“This isn’t the life Lacey wanted for you,” he said, “You could do so much more. Instead you’re wasting your time working for that _snake in the grass_ , smoking behind the diner with the Lucas girl, taking advantage of the mayor’s hospitality-“

“How could you know what my mother wanted? She left. She abandoned me. She never wanted me to begin with. At least my father stuck around.”

Moe didn’t say anything. 

“It’s a little late in the game to decide to be a parent to me, don’t you think?” Sofia snapped.

“You watch your tongue, girl,” Moe said. 

“I think we’re done here,” Sofia said, downing the last of her wine and standing from the table, “We don’t need to do this anymore.”

_____________________

**Enchanted Forest  
Five Years Before the Dark Curse**

Without Him hovering around like a fly, Maurice could feel his shoulders begin to relax. His apprentice - Stella - silently moved to the window overlooking the kingdom.

“You can see as far as the sea now,” he said, his voice shaking, “Back in the old days, when the ogres came, it was just smoke for miles.”

Stella nodded. “The Dark One did that.”

“ _Belle_ did that,” Maurice corrected her.

Stella tore her eyes from the landscape to look at him. His chest tightened in their ice blue gaze.

“She was a princess, in this land?” she asked.

Maurice nodded.

“She spoke of it here often,” Stella said quietly, “I think she was homesick.”

She turned from the window entirely, walking toward the throne, running her fingers over the edges of the carved wood.

“So the rumors are...you are...” his voice trailed off as his heart pounded in his chest.

She looked up from her study of the chair, but didn’t speak. He took a good look at her - her chin, her eyes, the set of her shoulders, her small frame - and though she looked so alien, so far from Belle in her high collar and dark gown, he knew. 

“She spoke highly of you. It has always puzzled me then, that when you found me five years ago, you felt the need to lock me away,” she said after a moment.

Maurice felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. “Belle said she had enemies. She feared He might -“

“She did not consider the Dark One an enemy.”

There was something in her eyes - this girl, His apprentice, Belle’s daughter, _Maurice’s granddaughter_ \- that he had seen on the day he had gone to bring her back to Avonlea. Something dark and frightening, something that reminded him of the strange flash in the eyes of the man that had taken his daughter away in the first place. She moved like Him, her gait just a little wrong, and the air felt disturbed where she had stood in the moments before. 

“You did not answer my question,” she said, elegantly sitting in the throne. She folded her hands in her lap - she did not smile, and that darkness in her eyes made Maurice feel as though the floor might drop out from under him at any moment. “Why did you lock me away? Why did you send the clerics? Why did you _never once_ come looking for me?”

“Him,” Maurice said pathetically. Stella unfolded her hands, leaning on the arm of the chair and waiting for him to continue. “There were whispers, old rumors from Aspasica...my Belle, she always saw the best in others... If you were His, you could have magic.”

“Magic is not a crime in this land,” she said firmly. 

“Magic is dangerous,” he countered. “We had to be sure.”

“Be sure of what?”

Maurice shook his head, his eyes downcast. She even sounded like Him. But now, before her, he struggled to admit that he had had such ugly thoughts.

“Be sure of _what_?”

“That you weren’t like Him!” he wailed miserably, “We had to be sure that my Belle hadn’t been tricked into carrying a _monster_ inside of her!”

“That’s _enough_ ,” came a low growl.

Maurice looked up to find Him, his hand on Stella’s shoulder. Smoke was coming from between the fingers of the girl’s clenched fist.

“You said one hour!”

“You’ve had more than enough time,” he said, and with a flourish of his hand, the Dark One and Belle’s daughter were gone just as suddenly as they’d appeared.

______________________  
**Storybrooke**

Mr Gold returned to his shop in the afternoon, having retrieved some papers from his home office to help facilitate the sale of a plot of land the mayor wished to purchase, to find a rather agitated Sofia smoking and leaning against the wall in front of the shop.

“Miss Mills,” he said, his cane tapping on the pavement as he neared her, “I thought you needed the day off. Is everything okay?”

“Do you have kids, Mr Gold?” she asked rather abruptly.

He was taken aback by her question. Her eyes looked hunted, and her hand shook as she raised the cigarette to her lips.

He nodded. “A son...and a daughter.”

“Do they live nearby?”

“My son is far away,” he said sadly, “My daughter is closer.”

Sofia nodded, taking in his response. She exhaled smoke thoughtfully. “And you care about them?”

“More than anything.”

Sofia regarded him carefully.

“Did you fix my headlight?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied with a small smile.

Sofia smirked.

“Every year my grandfather says I remind him of my mother,” she said after a moment, “I don’t think he means it as a compliment.”

“Ah,” Mr Gold said quietly, his eyes downcast, deliberately looking anywhere but Sofia, “I don’t see how it could be anything but.”

“Did you know her?”

Mr Gold nodded. “I did.”

“Am I...” Sofia paused, carefully concentrated on her fingers as she ashed her cigarette. “Do I remind you of her?”

Mr Gold smiled, a real smile this time. He needed to choose his words carefully. “Nearly daily,” he settled on, his voice strained. 

Sofia took another drag of her cigarette, burnt nearly down to the end now, but her eyes had softened somewhat. “It’s Spinner, you know,” she said thoughtfully, “Mills is Regina’s name, my legal name is Spinner.”

He nodded; he knew. Even her name was a cruel joke.

“Regina makes me go for lunch with my grandfather every year on Lacey’s birthday.”

“With Moe French?” Mr Gold asked. He watched her stomp out the cigarette butt. She nodded.

“It’s always a nightmare. Nothing I do will ever be enough for him,” she said, “He says my father’s poisoned me.”

“Well, Sofia Spinner,” Mr Gold said, his hand tightening on his cane. “Your grandfather has always been a fool.”


	9. Skin Deep, Part 1

**Storybrooke**

There was no world in which any version of Sir Maurice was palatable to Rumplestiltskin - this one was no different. 

In Storybrooke, Belle’s father was a subpar florist, and for Mr Gold, learning that Moe French had defaulted on a loan _the very day_ he found Sofia so agitated from her lunch with him, was just a fortuitous turn of events. Taking a flower peddler’s van the day before Valentine’s Day had a certain poetic justice, and Mr Gold enjoyed every second of it. That it was Belle’s birthday, well, that was just the icing on the cake.

What he enjoyed less, however, was the smug smile on Regina’s face as she watched. 

“Mr Gold,” she greeted him, all false smiles and sickly sugar sweet tones, “That was quite the show back there.”

“Well, Mr French is just having a bad day,” he said with a forced small smile, “Happens to the best of us.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” she began.

“Yeah, and the moment you have something _I_ wanna discuss, we’ll have that little chat,” he interrupted.

“No, we’re going to do this now,” Regina said, “It’ll only take a moment.”

Mr Gold’s patience with the queen was wearing even more thin than usual. Regina’s insistence on pushing Sofia and Moe French together to celebrate the birthday of the mother she believed abandoned her felt, on this day, like a dig too personal to forgive. Regina would believe him still under the effects of the curse, but all the same she appeared to have a smugness about her that she had lost since her stepdaughter had come to work at his shop. 

“Is there something eating you, dear? Something you need to get out in the open?” he said. In this instant, he loathed her; he could feel the Darkness within him raging, calling out for Maurice’s blood first, then Regina’s. “‘Cause it’s gonna have to wait. _Please_.”

Well, at least that had taken care of that damned smug look on her face.

________________  
**Enchanted Forest,  
5 Years Before the Dark Curse**

Stella was quiet. Unnervingly quiet. 

Rumplestiltskin sat at his wheel, the familiar, monotonous motion helping to quiet his temper. Every single cell in his body told him to return to Avonlea and to snap Sir Maurice’s neck. Belle’s voice in his memories - _”My family, my friends...they will all live?”_ \- was the only thing that stopped him. Rumplestiltskin aimed to burn their entire world down to get to his lost son - and Maurice had locked the child of his lost daughter away in a tower, out of sight and out of mind. Even to the Dark One, it was despicable. 

“Tell me about poisons, Papa.”

Stella’s voice startled him. She had sat silently by a window when they’d returned to the Dark Castle; the sun had begun to set, and she had not moved in quite some time. 

“They kill,” he said quietly, the spinning of the wheel stopping. “Indiscriminately.”

She nodded pensively. “I think I could gladly kill tonight.”

Rumplestiltskin took stock of his daughter then. Such statements were not like her, and she looked as though she might cry. He had made a silent promise to himself, during his daughter’s first days at the Dark Castle - the curse of the Dark One had twisted him, blackened his heart, but he would never allow that to happen to Stella.

“And darken your heart in the process?” Rumplestiltskin said, standing to approach his daughter. He shook his head. “It would break your mother’s if she could see that.”

“There is darkness within me, Papa. Mama knew it, she was frightened of it,” she said shakily. Stella has told him before of the times she’d used instinctual Dark Magic in Oz - as far as Rumplestiltskin knew, curses were not typically hereditary, but his child had been fathered by the greatest curse of all. “Perhaps I am...what he said of me.”

Maurice had called her a monster. Rumplestiltskin should have ripped his throat out.

“I miss her,” she said quietly.

Rumplestiltskin smiled sadly. There had not been a single day that had passed that he didn’t regret sending Belle away. It had been five years since Stella had come to live with him at the Dark Castle, and Rumplestiltskin was haunted hourly by the might-have-beens - the years of Stella’s childhood that he had missed, the years he could have spent with Belle by his side, the idea of himself and Belle with Baelfire and Stella, a _proper_ family - and the ghosts of what had happened instead - Belle and Stella spending years living in secret and fear, Belle’s untimely death, the mistreatment and abuse Stella had suffered at the hands of her grandfather...

“I miss her too,” he said, his voice a hoarse croak.

Words were inadequate. He blamed himself. 

He had scorned Belle, turned her away. If he hadn’t been such a coward, their daughter could have grown up protected - and she would still have her mother.

“Can a heart be sick?” Stella asked, “Does your heart ever feel sick?”

Rumplestiltskin smiled. He perched himself on the edge of her armchair and squeezed her shoulder. “There are many who doubt I even have a heart, my dear.”

“Well, I know that’s not true,” Stella said, giving him a watery laugh. 

“Many hearts may yet be broken in this world, but never yours,” Rumplestiltskin vowed. “I will not allow Maurice to harm you again.”

His own heart, shriveled blackened thing that it was, felt as though it might shatter into a million pieces. Yes, he supposed his heart could still feel sick.

He blamed himself for Belle’s death, for driving her away the way he had with Bae, for the hurt Maurice caused Stella, for any speck of darkness in his daughter’s heart, for the world that thought her cursed or a monster because of who her father was, for the tears currently filling her eyes...

“All the same, Papa, I think I’d like you to teach me about poisons,” Stella said, lifting her chin and wiping her eyes. She looked so like her mother... “And antidotes. That way, when we go to the Land Without Magic, I can help protect us.”

“As you wish.”

Rumplestiltskin promised himself something in that moment - whether it was in this world or the next, Sir Maurice of Avonlea would never hurt his daughter again. 

______________  
**Storybrooke**

“How was your lunch with Moe?” Henry said as he climbed into Sofia’s car at school.

“It was lunch with my Granddad, Henry, so a disaster,” Sofia said, rolling her eyes. “I stormed out, said we aren’t doing that anymore.”

“Wow,” he exhaled, “Bet he wasn’t happy about that.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to keep celebrating the birthday of a woman who skipped town, you know?”

“You think she skipped town?” Henry asked, “You know, with the curse...”

Henry’s book was still missing, but his faith was certainly not; Sofia smiled sadly.

“I think I worked out who you are,” he said brightly, in an effort, she imagined, to cheer her up.

“Oh yeah?”

“Well, Moe French is almost definitely Sir Maurice,” Henry began, “And in the book, he was Belle’s father, so Lacey must be Belle.”

“Like from Beauty and the Beast?”

“Exactly,” he agreed enthusiastically, “You know...Moe can be short for Maurice, and Beauty and the Beast is a _French_ story.”

Sofia smiled properly this time. “So you think I’m the daughter of Belle and the Beast? I don’t even think my father could grow a beard.”

“It’s not so literal,” Henry said, shaking his head, “Belle’s daughter - her name was Stella - I can’t remember her whole story, but she was powerful.”

“Powerful how?”

Sofia’s phone rang before Henry could answer.

“Miss Spinner?”

“Mr Gold?”

“I-I know you took the day off,” he said, and Sofia noticed that he sounded worried, shaken even, “But I need you to cover the shop, my home’s been broken into.”

**Author's Note:**

> Based on some writing I did for myself for background for an AU video since lost to the YouTube copyright void. Holliday Grainger, if you’d like a visual!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @cagedbirdx , I post chapter moodboards when new ones are available.


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